The multi-level penthouse that Rudolph added to a Beaux-Arts apartment block offers a sweeping view of the East River and was cantilevered out over Beekman Place to the dismay of his neighbor, Mrs. John. D. Rockefeller. A three-dimensional labyrinth of interlocking volumes that recalled Rudolph’s Art + Architecture Building at Yale, it became a laboratory that he tinkered with right up to his death in 1997. When Boyd began to restore it, he consulted architects from the Rudolph office that had worked on the project originally. But they wanted to do things their own way, and Boyd decided to trust his own judgement. “We navigated carefully through the levels of urban archeology and came up with a legible, livable solution,” he recalls. “Since all the mirrored mylar had to be removed from the steel beams for restoration, we decided at that point to play down the Studio 54 version of the building’s history while amplifying the elegance of the white marble and steel incarnation, alluding to Rudolph’s original vision and his legacy of purist modernism in Florida.”
